a first step from Rome (long)

[Harrison Owen]

At 01:40 PM 6/13/2002 +0200, Bernhard wrote:

>This reminds me of the time, when I was a group dynamic trainer in
>classical T-Group settings (following Lewins tradition) at Vienna
>University/Dep.
>Sociology.  At that time I was myself participating in various
>therapies. The more I learned about therapeutic interventions, the
>more and more "problem"
>cases showed up in my T-group trainings: people had break downs,
>people blackmailed the group and/or the trainer with suicide
>threats... I had to learn,
>that my "naive" speaking that I have "also some psycho-therapeutical
>knowledge" at my inicial presentation was interpreted as a kind of
>invitation: not to
>behave in a responsible way.
>So I think it is just the other way round:   I had to (and I am still
>in the process) unlearn a lot of my knowledge of group dynamics and
>other "facilitator
>skills" to become a good OST-facilitator
>Unlearning does not mean: "just forget about ist", but to transform
>the knowledge, integrate/dissolve it into the whole person and then
>step forward. What
>I mean is: no! no special skills necessary, but yes! of course we
>will be better prepared for OST &/in PEACE making
>if we become wiser and emotionally better integrated (healed)
>persons.
>(Medical & Psycho-)Therapy is a profession, Healing is something we
>all can do (co-healing our & other selves), even if we forgot that.

Bernard -- if these are just fragments, I would hate to see what happens
when you get the whole thing together. Unlearning and transforming are, I
think, critical as we move forward. For years I have found myself in a most
uncomfortable place. On the one hand it was clear to me that much of what
we (or certainly I) had learned and practiced under the general heading of
"group work" (everything from Dialogue to community building) constituted
real impediments to my effective role as a facilitator in Open Space. Some
genuine un-learning was therefor essential. At the same time the
understandings of the group and the individual gained from all of our work
were, and are, profoundly useful as we seek to understand what happens in
Open Space and where we go from here. At a practical level, as I conversed
with colleagues who's practice centered on any of the several approaches
(Dialogue, Community Building, Appreciative Inquiry etc) -- the interest
seemed to be -- How can we ADD these to Open Space? At the risk of
appearing a mono-maniacal Open Space freak, I I tried to say, there is
nothing to add, it is already there. But can we please use your deep
insights to understand what is really going on? At worst all this appeared
as some kind of ego war. My way vs their way. That was never my point or
feeling. Maybe now we are in a place where we can take "The Open Space
Experience" as primary data in a natural experiment, and go from there,
understanding that it is not about one method or another, but rather -- the
reality and power of naturally occurring self-organizing systems. Someone
once asked me what my vision might be for Open Space Technology? I replied
that it was simply a half-way (interim) technology, and under the best of
circumstances we would forget all about it. No longer something special --
simply what we did. Obviously, there is a role for OST at the moment as in
Rome. But the sooner we get beyond it, the better we will be.

Harrison


Harrison Owen
7808 River Falls Drive
Potomac, MD 20854 USA
phone 301-365-2093
Open Space Training www.openspaceworld.com
Open Space Institute www.openspaceworld.org
Personal website http://mywebpages.comcast.net/hhowen/index.htm

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